‘I guess so,’ mutters Methúsalem, avoiding the chief engineer’s accusing look.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ says John, sighing. ‘But from now on I’m not taking part in any fucking mess-ups! If we get laid off, then we protest it in the traditional and legal way and fight for our rights with the help of the union. Understood?’
‘Yeah, understood,’ says Methúsalem, his head hanging. He carries on down the stairs and Big John disappears into the mess.
After hanging up his gear down in the storeroom and turning his boots upside down on the boot stand, Methúsalem makes his way up the stairs, his feet soaking, his thighs, back and chest all wet.
He’ll have to put on some dry clothes before he relieves the captain on the bridge.
Methúsalem Sigurðsson’s steps are heavy and he looks nothing like his usual forceful self. He is, after all, weighed down by thoughts as dark as the storm that rages around the ship.
Only ten minutes ago he was hanging by one hand over the side of a ship in a raging sea, looking death in the eye; faced with his final hour, he realised something.
Without his job he would die.
During shore time he lies in bed in an alcoholic blackout, floating through the widths of oblivion and nightmares. When he comes to he reaches for the glass on the bedside table and knocks back its contents. Then he staggers out to the kitchen and makes another drink.
Vodka and Coke, half and half.
And knocks back its contents. Then all that’s left is to make another drink and stagger back to the bedroom with it before he loses consciousness again.
When he wakes up he reaches for the glass and knocks back its contents.
Sometimes he has to piss. Sometimes he has to puke. But mostly he just wakes up, drinks and makes another drink.
And then he falls into oblivion once again:
Boom, boom, boom…
Until three days before the next tour. Then bells ring in his head. Then it’s time to sober up.
And so he pukes and t hen he weeps. Then he enters a true hell that seems never-ending: shaking, cramps, hallucinations, chills and a temporary insanity whose roots keep reaching deeper.
But he doesn’t give up. He will turn up for work. He’s too proud to sink so low as to give in to Bacchus.
Until the next shore time, that is.
More than once he has been hospitalised with alcoholic poisoning and he has kept off the booze for the odd week, the odd month – twice, even, for more than a year. But he’s never really quit drinking. He’s meant to quit; he’s dreamt of quitting; yet he’s never taken that final step of seeking help for his alcohol problem. He has, in fact, never admitted to himself or anyone else that he has a problem.
He has never stood up, opened his mouth and rolled the heavy words from the mouth of his heart’s cave: ‘My name is Methúsalem Sigurðsson and I am an alcoholic.’
Why not?
Maybe he’s too proud to admit to the weakness. Too proud to seek help. But maybe he’s afraid of what’s hidden in the darkness of his heart, of what will reveal itself when the abyss opens wide. Maybe he’s afraid of finding what he’s been fleeing from all these years.
Emptiness.
On board the ship Methúsalem Sigurðsson has duties. He has a role to play. He knows what he has to do and how to do it. He is part of a united and organised whole. He is a man chosen to fill a particular space; he cancels out a particular emptiness.
He is Methúsalem, first officer.
Without this 4000-tonne iron monster, though, he’s like a cog without a machine. A dead object: useless, of no consequence. Perhaps he, just like the ship he sails in, is a soulless iron monster that has no idea where it came from or where it’s going. Ships have no independent will, and that which has neither will nor thought of any kind has no aim, unless it is directed by someone who thinks and understands, as an arrow is directed by an archer.
Methúsalem directs the ship he is in but he has no idea who it is who directs him. Is it someone who wants to save him from ruin? Or someone who wants to run him aground?
Is he the pawn of evil spirits? A favourite of the angels? Or just a ghost ship adrift on the sea of life?
He doesn’t know.
And maybe he doesn’t want to know.
The first mate stops outside his cabin on E-deck and looks at the fingers of his right hand, which, only a few minutes before, grasped the railing and saved him from certain death.
As if by accident.
He was face to face with death and survived. That was no accident!
Someone seems to be watching over him. Someone believes he should live.
Methúsalem Sigurðsson has been given another chance, and he’s not going to let it slip away. There’s too much at stake.
This is a question of life or death. Isn’t it time he gave life a go?
‘My name is Methúsalem Sigurðsson,’ he says loudly, then clears his throat, ‘and I’m an alcoholic!’
He smiles crookedly and turns the doorknob, but the door doesn’t move and his right shoulder slams against it.
‘What the hell!’
He puts his weight against the door and pushes hard. The door opens a crack and a moaning draught forces its way out into the corridor.
Did he leave a window open?
The wind is whirling around his cabin, blowing things all over. The curtains are torn, there is broken glass on the floor and everything is afloat in rain and seawater.
Methúsalem squeezes through the doorway and lets go of the door, which slams into its frame.
‘What the…’ Methúsalem stares at the window, which gapes above the bed like the mouth of a creature with a bottomless stomach and teeth of triangular shards of glass.
And the creature hisses and spits wind, sea and rain in the face of the first officer, who half closes his eyes and walks across the wet rug.
Why is the glass in the window broken?
Methúsalem pulls the blanket off the wet bed, bunches it together and is about to shove it in the open window when one of the glass triangles comes loose from the window frame and shoots at a rate of knots straight towards him. He barely manages to close his eyes before it embeds itself in his right cheekbone.
Methúsalem stops still, then touches the splinter of glass that’s sticking out of his face. He can feel blood running down his cheek, but the cold wind directs it to the side, into his right ear and his hair.
‘Good God,’ he murmurs, blinking. He bunches the blanket more tightly and shoves the bundle in the window, managing to shut out the wind and rain.
Silence.
The wind dies down; the temperature rises; the flying tatters of curtain come to rest; the blood runs under his collar and water drips from the table, shelves and cupboards.
Methúsalem goes into the bathroom and looks at himself in the mirror. The glass shard is stuck fast in his cheekbone, poking into the air like a tiny shark’s fin.
He pulls the glass from the wound. Then he disinfects the wound before closing it with sticking plaster. Once that’s done, he cleans off the dried blood with a warm washcloth.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ says Methúsalem as he undresses in the bathroom. Luckily, his dirty clothes from the day before are still on the hook on the back of the bathroom door. All his other clothes must be wet or damp, like everything else in the cabin.
The first officer dries himself with a clean towel, splashes himself with aftershave and dresses hurriedly. He runs a comb through his hair, brushes his teeth and, finally, slips into his shoes before stepping over the bathroom threshold onto the soaking rug.